Rebirth of Resolve
by wtdrgn
Summary: After Buu knocked Kaioushin out, the deity found himself trapped in a dream from which he could not awaken. In his dream Kaioushin had to face his own dark duties as a deity...and the slow, terrible destruction of one whom he came to love.
1. Part I

Part I: The Night Runner.

Slowly, gently, night unfurls its splendor . . . 

Grasp it, sense it, tremulous and tender . . . 

Turn your face away from the garish light of day, 

Turn your thoughts away from cold, unfeeling light - 

And listen to the music of the night . . .

~Music of the Night: Phantom of the Opera

The stars, glittering stitches in an endless tapestry wrought of midnight, softly illumined the darkened streets. Pools of garish yellows and purple lamplight whipped past like a rain of stars. Thin wisps of smoke-black clouds trailed from the dome of the heavens. Above the sleeping houses, trees, and night-blooming flowers hung suspended in thick, placid slumber, in which all time was forgotten and reality distorted within dreams.

Gentle breezes caressed the night runner's face, trailing its fingers through her swinging ponytail of sunglass. Scarcely did her feet linger on the pale ground, for she had melted into the night. A quicksilver shadow, the night runner sped onward. Save the crunch of rubber sole upon gravel and the swish through the damp grass, she was as much a part of this soundless place as the waxing moon.

Although this ritual was a nightly one, each run presented new awakenings of sharper senses in the cold air. These were many and diverse: shining mirrors of silver water; rich, crumbling earth; sweet blades of green grass; the wild heather and weeds waltzing in the gentle spotlight of the moon; thick, sour swamp gases; icy brick and warm wood; and the sharp aroma of hickory smoke. Emerald green hills, trees wrought of silver flaking bark, still black waters, sidewalks as pearls joined in seamless mastry…such were the wonders that a mere golf course took on when clothed in the mantle of shadow. Cozy houses, trim and neat, and sprawling mansions, unkempt, overgrown with rotting vines augmented the dull trickles of pulse coursing through her veins. When clothed in night's mantle, these simple, nondescript sights and smells became illustrious wonders she sought each night. She was an empty vessel and the night a rich, dark wine intoxicating her. That the night had taken others before her, there existed no question. However, these lovers meshed more completely, more intimately than any before them.

Higashi no Kaioushin, then seeking the ball of infamous Majin Buu, learned of the night runner and her affection for the shadow. Thinking that perhaps Buu had already escaped and molded his hideous flesh in likeness of another, he sought her. Finding the girl presented no difficulty, for it was impossible to mistake her pattern of ki. Flowing rapids of shadow wine, which evaporated in the sunlight, could not disguise the nothingness that resided within the riverbeds of her veins. For several nights, he watched her, secreted away in the topmost branches of a tree, or hovering above the roof of the most decrepit old mansions. At length, he decided that he could not determine the cause of the void within her simply by spying on her. As he watched the moon set the night before All Hallows Eve, Kaioushin made his decision. The next evening - he was certain she would not stray from the chance to run beneath the glowing orange Harvest Moon - he would confront her.

****

All Hallows Eve and its luminous orb of orange Harvest Moon flowed past the night runner as water rushing down a hill. Her motions were fluid, each time-sculpted, highlighted in the brief flashes of headlight and streetlight. She drew ravenous gulps of the air, straining her legs to achieve greater and greater speed. For several miles, she waltzed with the night, her feet pounding through sidewalks and crunching through fallen leaves. At length, the night runner came upon an expanse of browned grass and skeletal trees. In the light of the Harvest Moon, she thought she discerned a figure moving amongst the tops of the trees. Impossible, she knew. Yet with the leaves scurrying about her feet and the sweet perfume of pumpkin lingering in the air, somehow in the aura of the tremendous Harvest Moon, the possibility seemed very real. For the first time in months, her breath caught in her throat. She was a doe, bounding away to safety, away, far away from the presence. Her blood stirred in her veins, breaking the rhythm that had been unshakable since the previous summer. A cramp twisted her insides. Panic set in as she glimpsed the true nature of the night: sinister and deceptive. So deceptive was he that she had not recognized it in all their previous meetings. The light of the moon was as war fire, turning the sweat that trickled from her wrists the color of blood. Tree branches whipped into her hair, snarling and pulling. Tears came to her eyes as icy wind slapped her face. Her fingers, balled into tight fists, were numbed to the point of being immovable. Ears pricked for even the slightest of sounds, she easily made out the soft footsteps stirring the leaves behind her. She whirled about, eyes wide with dread. 

However, the being before her nearly brought a laugh to her lips. How stupid she'd been, the night runner berated herself. Why, she had not overreacted like that since…God knew when. A second look sent the laugh back down her throat, choking her. Though the keeper of the presence was shorter than her, the ki he exuded - she sensed many other things about him, inexplicable qualities that frightened her - surpassed any she had sensed in her short life. Despite her predicament, a wry smile twisted her lips almost in bitterness. _A damned shame that I have spent so long shaping my ki to _flee_ an enemy, _she thought brashly.

"I have not come here for combat." His lilting voice, almost elven, sent tickles of danger down her spine, as if a loose strand of hair brushed the taut flesh of her back. He took a step toward her.

The night runner took a step back. She instantly regretted it. He had not made any intimidating gestures. However, the danger prickle in the back of her mind shot off sparks as if it was blazing metal struck with a hammer. Now that she had stopped, apparently for good this time, the night runner's pulse quickened like flame fed with oily fodder.

"The night has made you cautious." From his tone, she could not tell whether he approved of this. "Who are you, self-named night runner?"

"I should ask you the same." Though she planned for the words to ring out boldly and challenge this being who had interrupted her run, the words stuck in her throat like caramel sweetness.

"You first." His sinister, mocking smile hinted that he was quite used to getting his way and that his 'offer' amounted to little more than a command.

"I am Meghann." As the night runner at last spoke her name, her mind draining of the thousand aliases she could have used, a scattering of goose pebbles raced up her arms.

"Well met, Meghann night runner. I am Higashi no Kaioushin." He bowed and then extended his hand to her. 

She stared in disbelief. Kaioushin's hand emitted an opaque lavender aura. Not trusting the strange light, yet unable to resist reaching for such a boundless reserve of ki, she clasped his hand firmly. The touch of his warm palm against her own sent jolts of adrenaline through her bloodstream. Meghann dropped Kaioushin's grip with a gasp. "What did you do to me?" she demanded.

"Nothing at all." 

She did not believe him for a second. "I must be on my way. If you'll excuse me." She waved in parting, wanting nothing more than to flee back to the shadow's embrace. Scarcely had Meghann taken three steps when something compelled her to turn around. "Higashi no Kaioushin…." She handled the phrasing of his difficult name as if it was fine crystal. "Will you be in this place tomorrow?"

"If it pleases me, then yes, I shall await you in this place again." He stared after her long after she had turned. Several times, the burning of his inky-black eyes against her shoulder blades compelled her to glance behind. To her discomfiture, he had taken up his old place, nestled amongst the spindly tree branches. Though his eyes were of similar hue to the night, they somehow pierced the veil of darkness to meet her own. For a change, Meghann felt grateful to return to her home and slam the door on the night. 

As silver dawn won back the hours, evil dreams befell both the night runner and the Kai. She dreamed of Kaioushin's ki illumining the night with lavender, choking off the darkness altogether. His eyes trailed her, a beam of silver marking the things upon which they rested. Once this spotlight enveloped her, try as she might, she could not outrun it. 

The Kai, on the other hand, dreamed of the horrendous void pulsating and growing within her. He knew, even if she did not have any connections to Majin Buu, the appalling emptiness within her would be a certain threat to the east.

Distant thunder rumbled and set the pebbles of the worn roads trembling the next night. Uneasy stillness clung to the air, a stuffy weight that pressed on the night runner and slowed her progress. Sewer grates radiated blasts of heat like volcanic gases, souring the air. When the first streak of blue arced across the sky, it illumined the grass and stones as if it was a strobe light. Meghann forgot all time and trouble, content simply to fly through each moment as it seemed, each frame of her returned to life in the thick twilight. At the crunch of leaves beneath her feet, she seemed to recall a troublesome occurrence from the night before beneath the chill cast of the Harvest Moon. However, the oppressive purple-gray clouds above blocked the memories from surfacing. In this way, Kaioushin's second appearance startled her more than his first. He had kept vigil atop a burned out streetlight this time. He needed no illumination to locate the still emptiness that rippled in perplexity, unable to recall the happenstance of the previous night, interred deep in the vault of subconscious. That she could not remember puzzled him, but he supposed it did not matter. 

She remembered soon enough when his eyes met hers, trailing gray smoke, almost eerily white. "You again." Recognition flashed in her eyes, the point of a sharp sword. Without an exchange of words, he knew that she remembered him as the cause of the brewing unrest in her mind. Simultaneously, she recognized his perception. "What question will you put to me this night?" Her fear and uncertainty formed a poor disguise of arrogance.

The Kai crossed his arms. Suspicion radiated from her like the missing ki. Admittedly, there existed other ways, faster ways to determine the origins and intent of the emptiness that lay within her. However, he already had several ideas of how night worked through her. Because of this, the Kai was determined to not use these other ways unless time absolutely necessitated it. "Why do you run? What fascination does the night hold for you?"

"There are others who do as I do," she retorted. "I don't hear of _them_ being bothered by a peculiar being like you."

"You are different from the others. Besides which, you are answering backwards."

Meghann frowned in concentration. During these sprints through darkness, she could feel the pulse of the small town beating from the soles of her feet to her fingertips. Countless sensations could only be savored fully beneath the distant light of the virgin moon. How could she explain the kindling of fire in her legs and hands, the whip of wind stinging her eyes. Sometimes it could be unholy agony, sprinting down a boulevard with sweat streaming from every opening in her body to choke and drown her. Nonetheless, this delicious pain fueled exhilaration in her mind that transcended any other. Yet…to explain it to Kaioushin… True, she could simply summarize, claiming that these twilight journeys made her feel truly alive. However, that would open the way to more questions. The prospect of both answering and barring the way to further inquisition daunted her like a towering hill in the sunlight. "Clears my head, I guess," she responded at last.

Kaioushin's gentle laugh was as soft rain upon young spring leaves. "Of what?" 

Unable to find mirth in the explanation, Meghann stared at him in puzzlement. "Do you consider me empty-headed?" she demanded of the elven deity.

Kaioushin fell silent. "No. You cloak your secret in silence." He winced. A single loose thread in his plan could unravel all of the great tapestry he had woven. "If you are even aware of it within you," he amended hastily.

"Speak of them and I will tell you if I recognize them." Her eyes were fog crystals, daring him, luring him to lower his guard. "A loss for a gain. I cannot tell fully what _you_ seek from these odd questions."

Her voice was as Kaioushin imagined that of the serpent: smooth and convincing. He drank deeply of the sound, savoring the sensation within his sensitive ears. There would be much to tell her and with no way to determine what she knew… The enormity of the task weighed upon his shoulders like the yoke of responsibility Buu had left him with when he had vanquished the other Kais. "You are a dry riverbed and the night as phantom waters that crash through it. Do you understand what I am trying to impart?"

She shook her head warily. Others before the lavender Kai had tried to bar her way to the night. None had succeeded. "You are trying to keep me from being a conduit for this electricity as you see it," the night runner stated, her voice hard and cold.

"Not necessarily. I seek to understand the emptiness that lies inherent within you."

"It was hardly inherent," she laughed. "I worked for it many hours. It was a rhythm of sorts, if you must know. Much more difficult than the beat of drum or the turning of a rope, I might add."

"You mean…" Revulsion he could not disguise trembled on the edge of Kaioushin's lips. "You sought this nothingness?"

Her eyes narrowed in renewed distrust. "In making these treks across starlight road and shadowy curb, I can resolve matters of the subconscious. I suppose you would not see the importance in this. Merely by standing near you, I can sense the pulse of life flowing through you. Somehow you hold thousands of lives in balance simply by existing."

Kaioushin's eyes narrowed. She had hit too near the mark for this approach to be safe, at least for this night. "When do your powers peak?" he could not resist asking.

"Midnight," she answered inevitably. 

The god's drumming fear escalated to a boundless crescendo as he recalled the destruction Majin Buu had brought about. _Now there are those who seek to replicate the hellacious emptiness that hideous creature embodied. It is too much to bear! _He invoked the power of kai-kai without so much as a gesture of parting. Back on Kaioushinkai, he brooded long until after the sun rose above the silent realm. Eventually he slipped into a troubled doze, his head pillowed on his arms. Late in that evening, when twilight shadows marched across the hillside, Kibito roused him.

"It is not like you to sleep the entire day away," his powerful bodyguard remarked. "What troubles you?"

Kaioushin did not answer. Like a distant light playing about his face, he could sense that the deep shadows of twilight stretched their bony hands across the earth and called to the emptiness within the night runner. 

"I found a relative location for the ball of Majin Buu," Kibito broke the mournful silence at last.

"Was it buried?" Kaioushin questioned wearily. _My whole life seems to be an inquisition, _he thought bitterly. _Sneaking about, prying in the affairs in mortals… Jumping at shadows… _He cursed his weak body.

"Buried? In a manner of speaking." Kibito frowned, not understanding his charge's concern. 

Kaioushin's face drained of blood. "Where, exactly?" His fingertips prickled as if tiny electrical sparks danced across the smooth tapered flesh. What would he do, what _could _he do if Kibito told him the ball was buried in the flesh of a human?

"In the ground. Deep near the core of the earth."

Kaioushin sprang to his feet. Suddenly the ageless realm of spun sugar lavender glass seemed as ephemeral as the planet he had visited some nights ago. Recalling the screams of the other Kais as Buu eradicated them, he froze. He could envision the day so clearly… 

Blood reflected within the puddles of the first storm to break over Kaioushinkai in millennia. Buu was the storm and his master Bibidi the vengeful conjurer of the clouds… Blood staining the holy lavender of hand, mountain, and grass. Kaioushin had hidden with Kibito in the shadows of hillock and tree, hearing Buu's calliope whistle intermixed with the deranged laughter of Bibidi, the circus master… Several times, the creature had nearly found him. Luckily, for the Kai, to Bibidi's fury, Buu had become unmanageable when he had struck the first blow to the Kai. Babidi had sealed the creature in a crucible that resembled mortal flesh sewn together, a filthy pouch missing a drawstring. 

As the vision faded, Kaioushin drew in a shuddering gasp. "We cannot wait! We must set out to find and eradicate this monster!"


	2. Part II

Part II: Of Dreams and Waking

Close your eyes and surrender to your darkest dreams! 

Purge your thoughts of the life you knew before! 

Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar! 

And you'll live as you've never lived before . . . 

~Music of the Night: Phantom of the Opera

"Why didn't you tell me?" the night runner, faster, leaner, stronger than she was at their last meeting exclaimed.

Kaioushin's eyes widened and his mouth dropped. "Babidi! Is this another of your enchantments?" he yelled at the sky. Blazing wind laden with humidity swept across his skin. Summer thunder rumbled above him. Buzzing of countless insects filled the air. However, pearly pink twilight hung heavily in the sky. Beside the infant pink of the sky, the moon was the washed out, white face of an old woman. _How like Buu, _the Kai mused. _I wonder if this is one of Babidi's preposterous jokes. _

"You've stayed away long enough for me to figure it out." Meghann smiled as if she had uncovered a treasure chest laden with jewels. "You are the guardian of the eastern balance.!"

Kaioushin, stopped in his tracks, ravaged with suspicion at the sudden change of surroundings. Her voice was the long forgotten medley of storm-blown winds on a summer afternoon. His eyes watered as if the sound was as sharp and ear-splitting as it was pleasant. "How long _has_ it been?" he asked, dazed.

"Months! It was November the last time I saw you. Now it's almost July." Suddenly her eyes narrowed. "What has happened to you?" 

"Happened?" he stalled, backing away cautiously. Sweat trickled behind his ears as they strained for the slightest whistle of Majin Buu.

"You're not supposed to be intimidated when a mortal girl pulls a face at you." She crossed her arms indignantly. "Walk with me," she invited. "It will clear your mind."

Almost without thinking, Kaioushin complied. Suddenly suspicion made him start back. _Everything is somehow different here…yet all is the same. Meghann is still saying the same things, still feeding the void inside her… _As he pondered the possibility of Buu springing from her form, it took great effort to steady his hands. Her face remained as it had been the sun and wind blown flesh of a mortal girl. 

Without realizing it, Kaioushin allowed his feet to hover several inches above the roadside as he pondered what could have happened. He vaguely remembered Gohan's incredible kamehameha ki attack - two in a row for that matter. Both of these had failed to so much as pierce the leathery, old flesh of Majin Buu's ball. It had taken several additional terrawatts of energy on the part of the arrogant Saiyan prince and Gohan's father to fully rupture the seal. Once the ball had opened, with a stench like a thousand corpse lying in the hot sun, Buu had proved his nature just as peculiar and incomprehensible as the destruction he sought to deal out. After considerable cajoling and threats from his new master, Buu had finally chased after him and Gohan, the latter whom he had felled with one punch. Kaioushin groaned. His futile attacks had sparked the wicked gleam that emitted from the cracks beneath Buu's flabby forehead; eyes, if you call them that. 

Try as he might, Kaioushin could not recall any of Buu's attacks. Upon his mind was melded a single picture, tiny as a stamp yet larger than life, two eyes mad beyond measure, within them, chaos swirling. As the Kai stared into this bottomless maelstrom, his body experienced blinding pain. Each blow Buu had rained on him had reverberated throughout his entire being, immobilizing his limbs. So much as touching Buu, the avatar of chaos and emptiness, had threatened to shatter the Kai's sanity completely, proof of the eternal conflict between a keeper of order and a sower of chaos. 

Before the memory could take hold of him completely, Kaioushin banished it with rationality, albeit logic tainted with abstract reasoning. For this, he could derive no explanation, save intuition, for which he harbored tremendous contempt. _This must be a dream of sorts…a coma. I could die at Buu's hands while I'm still here! I suppose the only help for it is to wake up. But how in the name of all creation am I going to do that?_

"What would have happened any differently if you had known of this curse?" Kaioushin bitterly demanded at last.

Meghann sighed and stopped beneath a yellow street lamp, a single lonely island in danger of being swallowed anew by the turbulent sea. "I would have understood your hatred of nothingness, I suppose."

"No mortal being will _ever_ fully comprehend it or this hellacious mountain of responsibility!" Kaioushin snapped vehemently.

Meghann, shocked at the normally reserved god's outburst, listened spellbound to the tirade that he could no longer contain.

"The enormity of a guardian's responsibility is beyond the understanding of those beneath us, feeble beings who find sleep in the hours of night, those who, after death, find a realm of joy and restoration that heals all wounds. It is not so for we keepers of the balance! We are constantly on the alert, watching, waiting, skulking, and suspecting…every living thing! Trust is not considered, even in the dreams of the maddest!" 

Incensed, Kaioushin began to pace back and forth within the confines of the circle of light. "Can you even imagine what it is like to have witnessed thousands dying in your place because you are too important to lose?" His voice trembled as the emotions, a raw embodiment of the chaos he hoped to prevent, clashed within his body. Unable to escape the agony he'd denied for millennia, a thousand ragged shards of fury, humiliation, and lately, a cavernous vault of inferiority, the Kai admitted to the travesty that had encompassed nearly his entire existence.

"I watched them die…north and west kaioushin… Kibito wouldn't let me confront Buu on my own… We started to look for south Kai… However, Buu found him first. I huddled blindly in the darkness, listening to their clash. Their fight seemed an endless repetition, Bibidi shouting encouragement in his fanatical, tottering hiss, Buu's piercing whistle..." Kaioushin leaned against the pole, his whisper ragged with sorrow. "I only heard south kaioushin's screams toward the end. Finally, when the sun rose, Buu struck the final blow and absorbed him. Then he set off to earth to satiate his gluttony. In one night, I had inherited the burdens of all of them. I made a vow on the planet to bring honor to their realms and to be the best caretaker possible after Buu was destroyed. However, every one of my plans unraveled. Bibidi passed on the secret of breaking open Buu's ball to his son Babidi without my knowledge. The Potara earrings that could have combated the wizard and his creation are still hanging from my ears, unused. True, the Saiyans might have used them. Yet…" As he hung his head with a tremulous sigh, one of the fiery, delicate orbs flashed silver. "Their arrogance! Damn them!" Shadows concealed his agony but little. 

"One in particular, Vegita… Once prince of all the Saiyans, he fell from power when Frieza destroyed his planet. Later he met Son Goku who saved his life and defeated Frieza. However, I believe that Goku's ultimate transgression in Vegita's eyes was that he harnessed the power of the super Saiyan before he could. Vegita gave himself over to Babidi so that he could fight Son Goku…another fight had killed Son Goku and he had only one day to spend on the earth. Vegita could not see past his own pride for the benefit of others, the selfish, overconfident…!" He trailed off, unable to meet her eyes.

"I know," she whispered. 

Kaioushin shivered. An inexplicable current of power surrounded her, though if he analyzed it, he found only a distorted collection of recollections…his memories and fragments. This peculiar non-ki - what else _could _he call it? - set her hair billowing though no wind broke the stillness of the sticky June dusk.

"You and he were very alike." Her eyes, though fixed on him, seemed to look far beyond the dim culdesac. "He gave himself over to death against Frieza when the golden power eluded him, yet when it seemed within his grasp, his boasts shook the hills."

"In _what_ way is that similar to me?" Kaioushin, able to focus now that he had drained off a measure of his sorrow and regret, demanded. 

"Similarly, you too are confident and don't look before you leap, so to speak. Then after realizing what has happened, you allow panic and zealous caution to override your true potential." Her luminous gray eyes arrested his and the clear-water music of her explanation suggested that she believed much potential to be locked away within him. "I believe-" At once it seemed that Meghann and not the non-ki who addressed him. "That if you only believe in yourself, you will go farther, maybe even overcome that part of you that hangs any hope with ropes woven with conceived mediocrity.

"Forgive me my dark outlook." Kaioushin smiled bitterly. "Do you know what it is to have countless people stretching your hands to you, screaming for mercy, deliverance, and the like and being unable to do a damned thing more than you already are?"

Meghann tried to tear free of the agony that seemed chiseled into the very bones of his visage. However, his bottomless eyes were inescapable. 

"I count their faces. There are the angry ones that refuse to believe in the gods. It is they who plant and germinate seeds of distrust, aiding Buu in their own way. Those who weep for an unavoidable fate are an inescapable chorus at the rare times I find to spend by myself… However, those that most unsettle me are those who have lost all their energy and will to believe. Their faces are streaked with blood and dirt. They wear the filthy chains of captivity, war, others' greed… There are so many like that, so many like me who did not choose their fetters, yet are forced to drag them along, day after day. The suffering peoples, I call them. I long, more than anything, to aid them! It is undeniably cruel, this admission: a people that fall under Buu's shadow will not endure pain for long. Vengeance stays my hand from the path for which I long, that is true. However, if I cannot keep Buu at bay, even my charges and the work I did among them would be of no avail… The worst of this responsibility is that I cannot walk away from it. There is no one else to aid or replace me." Though Kaioushin had barely broached the torment of heart, soul, and mind he had endured, he could continue no longer. Meghann's arms went around him, crushing the very life from his body as he imagined. Overcome, Kaioushin made no move to dislodge her. _If this is Buu's doing, I hope he's quick about it! Such shameful weakness I just exhibited… How Babidi would laugh! _However, several minutes passed with none of his bones snapping, no triumphant grin splitting the night runner's face. Kaioushin opened his eyes slowly. "What are you doing?" he asked tiredly.

"How do you stand it?" Meghann, normally so composed, sounded on the verge of tears. "I never understood before…" Her hair brushing against his cheek was silken, a gentle caress. She drew back. Kaioushin gasped. Shiny tracks that she made no effort to hide glinted from eyelash to chin. 

__

I did not mean to make her cry… 

"Do you mean that no one has ever given you a hug before?" Suddenly the night runner, whom he had feared in the days before Majin Buu's release, seemed as the other mortals in need of his protection. Oddly her tears made her more vulnerable. Belying this delicacy, her fury-ladden words resounded through his heart like the peals of church bells. In this inescapable din, his task took on new angles, some sharper than before.

"I believe it would be considered sacrilege," Kaioushin remarked wryly. 

"I'm…I'm sorry," she apologized huskily.

He gently reached to her flushed cheeks. Upon his fingers, the tears vanished. "Of course, these are hardly ordinary times. Had they been, I might have spoken of the wonders of the universe. You are right," he admitted at last. "I do overlook things. Too long have I focused only on prevention. Perhaps I _should _fuel my determination with preservation… Even if this _is_ a dream, I am glad to have had it. If I ever awaken, I think I will be able to find a way to prevail against Majin Buu." 

Meghann strode into the darkness and beckoned for him to follow. They followed the road to the shores of one of the still lakes that dotted the golf course. When she knelt in the dry grass, Kaioushin sat beside her. For several minutes they watched the moon's opaque banner billow across the heavens. "Do you still think this is a dream?" she whispered at last.

"Why shouldn't it be?"

"Why _should_ it be? In dreams, do you so much as notice the sweet grasses of summer? Here, their stalks have absorbed the night wind until they seem perfumed with the blood of the gods! Is the wind off the water so moist? Does the air teem with the music of life hidden while the sun surveys the land?" When he did not answer, she lay back, musing aloud. "A dream is filled with marvels, yes, but none of the natural, hidden wonders that people overlook so easily in their own concerns. If this was a dream, you could not experience the magic of summer night… Not all darkness is perverted from evil." 

"You have nearly convinced me." Though he had never done anything quite so strange as lie on the ground, Kaioushin followed her example. Blades of grass tickled his face, with a soft hoarse laughter that even his sensitive ears could barely make out. "Yet…why tell me these things?" 

"It cuts deeply to be taken for a mere phantasm, even one that help you understand yourself. I should pinch you to show that I am real." Pale golden spirals lazily drifted from her hair as she sat up and swung her hair behind her shoulder. In the dim illumination of the silver moon, her gray eyes twinkled as moonstones. Suddenly Kaioushin was conscious of her nearness, and with it, a purity more painfully sweet than the blood that coursed through his veins. His cheeks blazed so that the humid evening seemed as the soul of black winter on a dismal shore. He pulled her back down beside him, savoring the sensations that surely could not be spun of dream thread. Their lips just brushed, the gentle sweep of wind upon water, stirring infinite ripples across an otherwise deceptively still mirror-like surface. Before he could catch her, she tugged away. Hardly daring to reflect on what had passed between them, Kaioushin stared after her, perplexed. He had barely glimpsed the fleeting, shine of alarm in her eyes before the unfettered emissaries of hell itself took command of the night.


	3. Part III

Part III: The Dream Becomes a Nightmare

Meghann huddled not two feet from where the Kai lay; somehow the distance seemed greater. "Meghann…" he faltered. The emptiness, to which prolonged exposure to Majin Buu had dullled his ability to sense in her, seemed to be tearing at the seams. Dread drained his face of blood. Pulses of adrenaline trembled at the tips of his ears and fingers, each as the shock of waking to a man long submerged in a dream. 

Her face livid with pain, she somehow managed to drag her head up to look at him. However, the face was not her own. Kaioushin realized with a stab to his heart that he had become remarkably familiar with her true features; the thin lips, curly golden locks, a nose lightly dusted with freckles, piercing eyes like radiant clouds dimly blocking the sun framed with long, sooty lashes. Hideous silted eyes almost buried in fleshy folds regarded him from her face, the pupils barely discernable. The insignia of Majin marked the forehead, a bold stroke of the brush. 

Kaioushin gasped and staggered backwards. "You! How did you…What did you…" Flabbergasted, the Kai clenched his teeth and crouched defensively. Tears of hot rage seared his almond-shaped eyes. _Tricked…so horribly… _Near blindness caused Buu's piping voice, like a stretched balloon deflating, to resound hollowly in his sensitive pointed ears. 

"Yucky! Yucky, yucky, yuck! Kissy, kissy with the Kai!" He danced about in a circle, thrusting the extensive bulk of his lower half toward Kaioushin with vulgar delight. "Buu not want kiss! Buu want cracker!" Suddenly Buu threw back his head and his calliope scream ripped at the seams of the sky. Violent convulsions wracked the magician's creation, making thunderous waves of hurricane might course across his flesh. Like a globule of butter in a frying pan, Buu seemed to melt away. When Meghann appeared in the midst of the vanishing mists of the fat monstrosity, her shock and terror mirrored his own.

"Who are you?" Kaioushin snarled, aghast.

"What happened to me?" she whispered. She closed her eyes, as if a swoon would overtake her limbs "The night was flowing through me rapidly when I kissed you, so fast that it overspilled its banks… Then I felt myself floating away from my body. I have no recollection of where I went, though."

Kaioushin, hardly daring to believe the explanation, took half of a step towards her. Every inch of his being longed to believe in her, to rush to her side and crush her to him, continuing what had been forgotten in the excitement of Buu's manifestation. _How could it have happened? _He could find one explanation; albeit, it fit the situation so perfectly that his blood ran cold. _She is a conduit for darkness, though neither one of good or evil. I have seen her neutrality: in the innocence pleasure she derives from the enhanced senses, while acceptancing the fear that follows her in the echo of her footsteps and the whispers of her shadow. _

"It is as I feared from the time of our first meeting. You have unwittingly become a conduit, no, a shelter for Majin Buu."

She opened her mouth and then closed it. Her fists clenched until her knuckles turned white. Instead of the flurry of unanswerable questions that he expected, she turned to the stars, raw agony in her cry. "Why is it that all things succumb to evil, though we would not have it so?" He did not mistake the quaver of disbelief in her. "That makes me your enemy now." Such a final, abrupt blow she dealt him, though its effects affected her doubly so. She nearly buckled from the strain. 

After the kiss they had shared, Kaioushin could not meet her fierce eyes. Instead, he too turned to the stars for an answer. Claws of black cloud seemed poised to strike the brightest and send them hurtling to earth where they would hollow out their own grave before their fire died. A touch on his shoulder startled him out of his reverie.

"Tell me…about Majin Buu…and Babidi. Tell me everything. My heart could not survive my being your adversary."

A measure of the old helplessness surfaced. Kaioushin sighed. "I don't know what I can tell you that will help. Buu is a tremendous glutton, stuffing himself with other beings. I suppose it keeps the emptiness of which he is composed from folding in on itself."

A gleam like those of the vanished stars shone in her eyes, a warmth like that of the ember that would rekindle the life of the phoenix. "I think I know what I have to do!"

It seemed the ragged pain in his heart would split him asunder. "What can you do? Majin Buu is an entity of tremendous power!"

"Power that will collapse if his balance is interrupted! All I have to do is keep him from absorbing life, right? Other entities and things like that? My will is strong, unbelievably so from all these twilight runs."

"I would believe it, have no doubt. Yet there is the matter of another energy. That which you mortals call food. It's just a hunch, but your daily intake might provide Buu with all the fodder he needs to continue existing in you."

A shudder ran through Meghann. "You don't _want_ to believe in me, do you, Higashi no Kaioushin?" she whispered bitterly. "Just as you couldn't bring yourself to believe that Saiyans, though mortal, could exceed your power."

Feeble denials died on the tip of his tongue, leaving a residue of powdery ash. His hand found hers. He held his lavender hand and her own between them, the first and last of their shaky bond. _Such irony is woven for me… Were there any mirth in it, I might actually laugh… _Shafts of moonlight streamed between the spaces in their fingers and played about their faces. They made an odd pair. Really, the universe could not have brought together two more different individuals. He scarcely reached her shoulder. Hair as white as the wings of angels, as fine as trailing smoke from a snuffed-out candle framed a sensitive face. In his eyes, deep-set, inky darkness, the placid surface exuded the sorrow akin to the long-lived elves. So many shortcomings, sins, and travesties had these eyes looked on, unable to look away, that their surface, dark mirrors that should have remained impassive with confidence in the powers allotted to the guardian were ragged with pain. His clothes, once fine silk, hung in blood stained tatters. His most recent failure, his inability to make the Saiyans understand their peril, painted his face in overlapping shadows of sallow and haggardness. He was a careworn traveler indeliably aware that he could never return his home to the way things had been. With glints like tiny silver fish in a clearwater pool, the Potara earrings twinkled upon his timeless face. 

Beside him, she was the epitome of rosy youth. Troubled, her eyes were clear of conscience, their eerie light ignited from their brush with passion. No jewels adorned her and her clothes hung on her, ill fitting. Their shadows seemed as fleeting as ashes, in danger of being borne away on the hot wind. 

"I believe in you." A choking hand closed around Kaioushin's throat. "Yet what would stop Buu from climbing back into you once you expelled him?"

"I will make his stay," she touched her forehead, "Memorably unpleasant."

Kaioushin flinched at the hard, bitter edge in her voice, so similar to Vegita's when he had reprimanded Gohan, threatened the audience of Budokai, and defied Babidi. 


	4. Part IV

Part IV: Weakening

Past the point  
of no return  
the final threshold -  
the bridge  
is crossed, so stand  
and watch it burn . . .  
~The Point of No Return: Phantom of the Opera

However, Kaioushin did not understand the full meaning of her words until almost a week later. Aimlessly, he had wandered unseen in the small town of his supposed dream. Disappointingly, none of his efforts, hindered by the fact that he did not wish to encounter other mortals on the road, revealed a secret to awakening. To his unease, each night, Meghann ran as she had before. He wondered after several days, if the means she proposed to expel Majin Buu did not include giving up her uncanny connections to the bloodstained, wind-swept summer skies after all. 

Finally, his search of the day frustrated, he encountered her on the twilight road where they had first met. A hum of frenzied insects and the croaking of hoarse frogs nearly drowned out her footsteps. This surprised the Kai; before they had been as the roll of thunder. A thick scent of clover and flowers almost liquefied the air. Fine dust shone in the slivers of sun that permeated the oppressive gray clouds, undisturbed by wind or breath of the sleepy town. Almost in a stupor from the blazing heat of summer, he flew after the girl for several blocks. At last she noticed and veered off the path. Sweat rolled down her sunburned face as she bent, resting her hands on her knees. "Kaioushin!" she gasped. Coloring slightly more, she dabbed at her face with her tee shirt. A smear of dirt came off on the white tail. "Why are you still here? _Can't_ you wake up?"

Kaioushin shook his head without a word. In these brief instants, he _knew _something was wrong. However, concerned with his inability to rouse from the dream, he decided not to broach the subject. "I'm certain there is a reason for it," he replied confidently. 

A crow on the telephone wire above them cawed loudly three times. Meghann shivered, despite the stickiness of the evening. "Flag," she whispered.

"What?" Kaioushin squelched a mosquito that had landed on the tip of his pointed ear. The Potara earring swung erratically, throwing flashes of fire across his hand.

"It's a movie called _The Stand_. The devil takes on the form of a man named Randall Flag, but he can shape shift into a crow… Oh forget it," she muttered as Kaioushin regarded her in confusion. "The main idea is that the crow cawing like that is an ill omen."

Kaioushin shrugged. "It sounds like a foolish idea to me. Will anyone notice if I fly behind you? I don't want to interrupt your run after all."

Meghann grinned. "How thoughtful of you. But really, it is okay if we just stay here for a while. I don't really start to have fun on these runs until the stars come out." Noticing Kaioushin's shudder at the mention of the stars, she quickly changed the subject. "I think I figured out how Buu was able to follow you here."

Kaioushin's mouth dropped into an _O_ of surprise. "How?"

"It has to do with the atomic theory. When particles evaporate from a liquid, it is because the fastest moving of the bunch escaped their intermolecular bonds. Buu is high energy like you. Couldn't he do that?" Without realizing it, Meghann had started to walk. After she asked this question, she began to lope toward the fiery sun and its trailing streamers of pink cloud in the west. 

Kaioushin followed her. It seemed that the wind would sear his face. "Yes, after a fashion. Quite correct actually," he answered, reflecting on Buu's calliope scream and the steam that rose from his lumpy mounds of flesh. "Did you come up with that idea yourself?"

Meghann laughed. "Certainly not!" she managed to wheeze. "What a ridiculous idea! Me coming up with the atomic theory!" she managed to sputter, clutching her side. "That was the idea of a panel of scientists from about Einstein onward! I just studied it in school." She and Kaioushin swiftly dashed down an empty boulevard. To one side, overgrown fields waved their summer-gold banners proudly. To the other wafted an overpowering scent of sun-baked asphalt. Meghann's heart soared as if so often did, even as her body denied her growing weakness. Kaioushin did not mistake it. "Your face is so thin," he whispered. Another corner whipped them into shadows. Here it was no easier to speak of the demon that lodged within her. 

Her toe snagged in a crack in the road as the dread words fell from his lips. Momentum flung her to the ground before she could recover and turn the thrust to her advantage. Kaioushin lunged to catch her. For less than a heartbeat, she sagged against him. With a snarl of fury, she pushed the Kai away. "You're sounding just like the rest of them! Is food all that they ever think of?" Her stomach growled menacingly. "I'm trying, Kaioushin. Trying so hard! But even as I burn him with hell he has never experienced, my weak body is deteriorating."

"You needn't do it!" Kaioushin's lie burned his lips. "There must be another way-"

"No such way exists!"

"But it is just a small part of him! Help me to awaken from the dream! If I can fulfill my mission-" The Potara earrings glinted, a cynical reminder of his failure. "He will have to come out of you to be at full strength." 

Kaioushin's desperate words did not sway her. Setting her teeth, she motioned him to the roadside. "I have had a recurring dream since that night." Thick, dark clouds overshadowed Kaioushin and Meghann. Occasionally a bar of sunlight would pass over them. In their week apart, Kaioushin reflected, Meghann appeared as careworn as he did. Whether from the dreams or her plan to dislodge Majin Buu, he did not dare to guess.

"In it, I was able to fully comprehend that creature's suffering. He was folding up under himself, like a collapsing galaxy. There was no blood to spill, no bones to pierce his rubbery flesh. There was only nothingness to claw at a void of equal emptiness, scalding it with tongues of acid fires like to those of hell. His smoking flesh reeked of death… My spirit had left my body to watch myself turn the pages of cookbooks, tormenting him, tempting him with what he could have if he would only leave my body. Then…" She drew a shaky gasp. "When he had died -as close as he could come to it anyhow- his emptiness drew me along with it. Though already I was as wasted as the bones that lay in the sarcophagus at Penlenque, I experienced the tearing at my flesh. It curled and blackened long after I screamed my voice away. Then it hung like melted wax upon bone and tangles of muscle..."

Any words of comfort that Kaioushin might have offered died on his lips. Hers was a despair, so terrible, utter, and final that it strode beyond comfort and promises of morning. Suddenly he knew the only thing he could say. "It is clear to me, the meaning of this dream." He could feel her eyes studying his in the darkness. "Buu will try to remain in you at any cost. He might wait for the last, as you mortals say. You must have fortitude. Taunt him, spit on him, _anything_! He must be driven away or else-" He broke off, understanding at last the reason he couldn't awaken. _So long as Buu is alive in this place, the dream will go on… _Sweat slid down his face, the caress of withered skin upon his ageless lavender flesh. Temptation nearly knocked the wind from his gut. _I am Higashi no Kaioushin! If I destroyed this mortal shell, Buu would be forced out! Her fate is already sealed…no! I REFUSE to believe it!_

"I think I understand," Meghann slowly got to her feet. "By keeping hope alive, it is possible that he won't absorb me with his death." Her whimsical, misty smile belied her confidence.

Sighing, Kaioushin waved in parting as the flag of her ponytail and the music of her stride continued down the boulevard. He did not notice the shadow of utter despondency that overtook her once she passed into the thick shadows of the prowling storm. _What I did not tell him… _She berated herself, sprinting, her breath coming in painful spurts. _The second dream…_ Slowly, like a sunbeam sliding through her fingers, the roadside dissolved beneath her. Her head spinning, the night runner collapsed into the sun-scorched grass, reliving the terrible nightmare that had tormented her since the night Majin Buu had seized control of her body.

__

The night, the darkest through which she had yet traversed, pressed about her on all sides. She ran on, flinching from tendrils of darkness that cloaked house and tree, choking off life as it went. I never wanted to become the night! I only wished to experience its majesty! Nothing more! _Flames erupted in her chest as she whipped around the corners, an agile fish in swift currents. Her own breath wrapped around her throat as she expelled it, a ring of smoke crowning the sight of a volcanic explosion. Lightning exploded silently in the blazing night, perched like the legs of ghostly-white spiders upon the web of the sky. Her breathing became sporadic and frantic; there was little she feared more than running in a storm. Around her, she could sense the rippling heat waves of sidewalk, like swirling waters. Magnified as the heavens prepared to rain fury upon the land, the scents of swamp gas, crumbling, parched sediment, and sweet asphalt choked her. The drone of insects was as a thousand old women whispering of the storm's onset with their ghastly rasps. Pines roared in the gale and in her ears, the blood drummed faster and faster until mad speed overtook her. It was the greatest pace she had ever attained; the fields of weeds, the man-made lakes, house, tree, vehicle, light and darkness converged into a combination she could recognize in dream and waking without fail. _

Suddenly she came upon a single figure that had never been a consistent part of this ritual odysse, Even now, he stood out. In the consistent illumination of the lightning, Meghann could discern Kaioushin's lavender skin and his silver-white mohawk dancing upon the quick, sharp breeze. As she closed the gap between them, the subtle muscles of his chest plainly showed through his tattered silk garments, sharp angles against the harsh glare of sudden light. A gasp of surprise freed itself from her throat. All the strength went out of her legs as she skidded forward. In Kaioushin's almond-shaped eyes lingered a telltale hint of hazy blue. The night runner gasped; he had frozen her to the spot! 

Slowly, reluctantly, he advanced. "Once more I am left with no choice." Even in regret, his silver voice was like to the peals of a priceless crystal bell. Unable to do otherwise, she followed him with her eyes. Though as beautiful and strangely vulnerable as he had always been, a mantle of danger hung about him. Around the Kai flickered sparks of ki, the particles she had described - eons ago it seemed. His short, commanding figure was a vessel of tremendous unawakened potential. As Kaioushin drew closer, the oppressive stormy air magnified his cloying scent until it seemed that she stood in a garden of everlasting bloom. There was no mistaking the loathing in his eyes for what she had become. His hand closed around hers for an instant, whereupon she chanced to glimpse what remained of her flesh. It appeared mere panty hose atop her bones, a poor veil of their pitiful whiteness. Then Kaioushin raised his other hand, palm up to her face. "I am sorry it must be this way. But until Majin Buu is destroyed in this dream, there will be no way for me to reawaken." 

She lowered her eyelids in shame and sorrow. For the briefest of instants, a red ball of ki, a hell-sent fireball flared around her eyelids. "Forgive me…" Before the ki could so much as touch her, her heart shattered from the magnitude of his soul-shattering grief.

Trembling, Meghann broke free of the reverie and scrambled to her feet. She lit for the trunk of a gnarled tree. Once there, she leaned her head upon her hands. A violent spell of shaking overtook her, but no tears would come. Shaken, she peered around the protective wall, a silent witness to the wisdoms and follies of many generations. Kaioushin was gone from where they had spoken. A low moan escaped her. With her back to the tree's reassuring bulk, she forced her eyes to the place where they had met in the vision. Disbelieving her own good fortune, she managed a cynical smile. Slowly, the awful tightness vanished from her shoulders. Drawing a resolute breath, she dashed to the spot. In the endlessly shifting ceiling of sky, the first heralds of the storm began to warm up their instruments.

These same musicians had been long into their concerto by the night of All Hallows Eve. Kaioushin, though less watchful than Meghann, could sense the thick unrest. However, it was no storm that troubled the insects, nor violently swirled the waters with nips of sharp-toothed wind. From the moon, a witch's dark-toothed smile, to the silent houses, right down to the very road resonated with unease. A whisper lingered upon the lips of the pine trees and the grasses that grew in the warm mud beside the water. It traveled from cricket, to grasshopper, to frog, lean alley cat, and baying dog, a question none could answer, a demand that kept eyes open long after the appointed hours. Where was the night runner? Eventually the moon tired of waiting and retired into the west. Likewise, the gentle stars yawned and nodded off waiting for her. The dogs lumbered off to the soft grass inside their kennels. Though the frogs and crickets continued their symphonies with the alley cats fighting among themselves for the role of prima donna, they soon revised the score to make the drums of her footsteps unnecessary.

Kaioushin waited, crossed-legged, atop a light post. Of late, he had become indifferent to the workings of the dream, since there existed no method of which he could conceive to break free. More absorbing was the matter of Meghann's exorcism of Majin Buu. Her efforts thus far had produced little effect that he could measure save for making the bones of her face and arms protrude starkly. Not wanting to frighten her, he had said nothing. That she would become further emaciated before she could convince Buu to withdraw, he harbored little doubt. However, her insistence on making the nightly ritual confused and frustrated him. Though far less prominent than that of Vegita, her pride was as persistant as water and wind, capable of sculpting a mountain to their wills. No matter what he said or threatened, she would not withdraw. At last, however, it appeared that she had. Kaioushin permitted himself a small smile before reconsidering. After further deliberation on the matter, the very prospect of her change of mind seemed ridiculous. Something must have happened to her. But what?


	5. Part V

Part V: Coda

Wishing you were somehow here again . . .

Wishing you were somehow near . . . 

Sometimes it seemed, 

If I just dreamed, 

Somehow you would be here . . .

Wishing I could hear your voice again . . . 

Knowing that I never would . . . 

Dreaming of you 

Won't help me to do 

All that you dreamed I could . . . 

~Wishing you were Somehow here Again: Phantom of the Opera 

Kaioushin must have dozed off while considering the possibilities, for the sky of All Saint's Day had begun to gleam with a bloody hue. As if sillhouted in the blaze of distant fire, Meghann staggered along. Her dragging feet shuffled along the loose pebbles. Kaioushin could still make out a shadow of her former ability in the loping stride and the proud way she held her head. However, from her arm, bereft of one gray sleeve, trailed slender red threads. Occasionally Meghann would clasp a hand tenderly over the spot and then withdraw quickly as if the spot was sensitive and sore. Her breathing too, was out of sync with the normal way, the frantic gasping of one who has narrowly escaped a terrible fate. As he judged the desperation in her eyes, Kaioushin determined that there would be many miles before she considered herself free of her pursuers. Brokeness filled her face with misery. Suddenly Kaioushin understood that this was no mere circuit survey of the culdesacs. She was running - for real this time - for another horizon. 

Without taking further time to think on what he would say - for what _could _he - Kaioushin stepped off of the lamppost. It took pitifully little time for him to catch her. Even when his shadow fell across her, she did not look back, proof of the troubles surrounding her heart. Kaioushin quickly surpassed the night runner and hovered in front of her. As she approached him, he could make out the rasping sobs that shook her chest. Her eyes were blind, both to him and her beloved twilight. Bloodstains upon both cheeks marked her efforts to wipe the tears away. Kaioushin reached out with both hands and caught her by the shoulders. Her bones felt eerily fragile beneath his sensitive fingers. Beneath her paper-thin flesh fever fire raged. 

"What are you doing? What happened?" The Kai's emotions overwhelmed him so completely that he forgot the peril of Majin Buu. 

For many heartbeats, she did not answer him. "Kaioushin," she at last whispered. Her voice was that of a weary soldier. "_They_ were going to help _him_, Kaioushin! _They_ said they were going to help me, but I saw it upon their brows: the mark of Majin!"

__

Could she be raving? Kaioushin wondered. So many emotions tangled in her voice that it was impossible to distinguish madness, fear, sorrow, joy, or weariness.

Exhausted, she looped her arms together behind the deity's neck. "I can feel him wanting to emerge, Kaioushin. I had such high hopes that I would meet you again on this night, as pure as I was back then, when you first knew me and took me for the taint itself." She laughed bitterly. "However, it would seem that we mortals are subject to the same frustrations as you gods are." Her breath against his ears and neck was as chill as winter's core. 

Regarding her in horror, Kaioushin landed soundlessly upon the cool road. "Meghann, please! I cannot lose you too! You are the one mortal who was able to look past…" He broke off as memories of the beautiful dream assailed him. "Don't let that monster win!" He stared deep into her eyes. Of the girl charmed by the wiles of night, free from temptation by any glamour it could have offered her, few traces remained. Kaioushin'sface became drawn with dismay and suffering. _I must seek deeper… _Sweat and tears mingled upon his chiseled face, a glittering rain of stars.

"They …just buried a needle in my flesh and passed the raw powe - nutrients they called them - to him. His power is greater than it has been in many weeks." Despair set her jaw quavering in rage.

"The power over twilight was yours before it was ever his!" Kaioushin shouted, breaking the silence of the deathwatch hour. "Claim it and it will empower you! Drive him away!"

Tears shone upon the smears of blood upon her cheeks. A cascade of memories, of hospitals, questions, condescending faces, confident smirks, grim resolves, and lies coated in a pretense of friendship played before Kaioushin in the fathomless circles of her eyes. He stumbled backward, blinded by the pain so different from his own. She reached for him in desperation and their hands met. The contact sent her reeling to the sidewalk. Kaioushin gasped in astonishment. Majin Buu, little more than a transparent apparition, had at last emerged from the shell of her body. Meghann heaved a strangled gasp and stared at the creature in revulsion. Majin Buu turned his back on her contemptuously. "Me tired wait! You die _now_!" Buu hissed at the Kai. Kaioushin met his challenge with a surge of relief crackling through his veins. 

Suddenly it was as if the fallen Kaioushins had augmented his power with their own. He fought with greater strength and speed than he had ever known before, dealing blows seemingly upon the instant that his brain conceived of them. The exact length of the battle faded in his mind as the clouds closed in on that icy November day. Like avenging spirits, the breath of both the Kai and Majin Buu trailed around them, each choking the other. From weedy meadow, to glassy waters, to thick cloud, the battle progressed. Though Buu appeared as intangible as his own breath, every one of Kaioushin's blows sent him reeling. At long last, drenched in sweat, the due circled one another in a deadly face-off. Clearly the Kai had the advantage. The clouds above him burst, bringing with them streamers of icy rain. Kaioushin launched himself at Buu with a fierce battle scream. Distracted by the torrents, the monster made no move to stop him. Kaioushin's initial energy blast struck Buu head on. The deity followed up with a fatal rain of blows. He registered no sensation; his feet might as well have passed right through the apparition. However, Buu gave a terrible scream and dissolved like morning mist from the ground. 

With Majin Buu's disappearance, a flash of clairvoyance shot the length of Kaioushin's mind. Babidi's fanatical screech, he realized, at first with considerable mirth. The wizard's words quickly drained any peace Kaioushin found in victory.

"Well met, Higashi no Kaioushin. It appears that you have solved the riddle of my spell. Alas, there are some things dear to you yet. How easily you fools exploit your weaknesses! So long as such mortal tendencies lie within your race, there is no hope of your avenging the others! With as little as one death, I am capable of crushing all of your hope! Finally and forever it shall be!" An insane cackle joined in with the howl of the wind in the weeds and pines.

"What do you mean, Babidi?" Kaioushin demanded. Silence, save for the pattering rain and the echoes of laughter, was his only answer. _Could this have something to do with Meghann? _He knew before he reached her side that Babidi, in forfeiting the dream, had taken her life in return. 

She lay as she had fallen, with one hand tangled in a web of blood trailing in a river of rainwater. Her hair, already sodden, lay against the golden, wet grass. From her sallow lips, there issued no sound or breath. 

"NO!" Kaioushinmourned, seizing her lifeless hand in his own. There would be little sense in questioning an already clear reason. Numbly, mercilessly his mind resounded with her words, those that had distinguished her from all other mortals until they filled his head and drowned out one another's sense. _"…If you only believe in yourself, you will go farther, maybe even overcome that part of you that hangs any hope with ropes woven with 'mediocrity.'" _

"I have defeated Buu with my own hands…and thereby avenged Kaioushinkai. What could be more fitting than to pass on now?" He gently pillowed his head on her shoulder. Each raindrop echoed her words, lulling him to another place where murky figures glided through thick fog. Before long, even these figures passed from him and the fog rolled away, leaving him alone to brave the darkness. 


	6. Part VI

Part VI: Waking to Resolution

Wishing you were somehow here again . . . 

Knowing we must say good bye . . . 

Try to forgive . . . 

Teach me to live . . . 

Give me the strength to try . . . 

  
No more memories, no more silent tears . . . 

No more gazing across the wasted years . . . 

Help me say good bye. 

~Wishing you were Somhow here Again: Phantom of the Opera

The elven-voiced deity awoke hacking and sputtering. Grime coated his skin and clothes, which were stiffened with blood. Hardly able to remember where he was or why he should be there, Kaioushin surveyed the desolate land in which he had awakened. Hazy brown mountains shimmered in the distance. Dust swirled about his ankles as he staggered to his feet. The heavens, the hue of a firedrop, stretched above him, endless and untamed. He slowly mounted the blazing air currents, conducting a search of which only his subconscious was certain. In this befuddled quest, many hours of similar landscape, usually desolate mountain and cliffs sculpted from the wind, passed beneath his feet, unheeded. The shadows lengthened and darkened until even his sharp eyes could not make out crevice from hill. At length, stars spilled across the length of the sky, as inky as Kaioushin's very eyes. The tiny segments of diamond fire seemed a somehow crucial part of his missing memory of what had transpired to land him on this desert in the middle of the planet. However that night awakened no new understanding in him. 

Finally, the sun shone over the desolate land, illumining the sky in orange and golden flames. Bands of clouds, as richly shaped as the mountains themselves, casts pockets of shadow over the traveler. He had just begun to question the validity of his own memory when he stumbled upon an inexplicable patch of greenery amongst the lifeless desert. His roving eye fell upon a youth clad in black tatters. Tiny animals surrounded him, sniffing and licking at him with tiny noses and tongues. Kaioushin drew in a hoarse gasp as the memories slammed down on him on after another like a wall of ocean waves. _Son_ _Gohan! _

Kaioushin landed just outside of the clearing and strode through the relative coolness of the shade. The leafy trees there brimmed with life. How different it was from the world of dreams where the grass always shined like wheat and smelled of straw. _I have at last awakened. But how much of it was a dream? Could Meghann still be alive somehow? _Somehow he knew that this couldn't be so. Finally he understood the truth of the dream that was not a dream. _Like Buu, I was an apparition, a cloud of scattered particles as she would say. That would explain why I was able to strike him and why no one noticed my arrival…save for the night runner. _

Bitterness soured his mouth as he recognized the early stage of forgetfulness: referring to Meghann as the night runner. _Was it her affinity with the night that enabled her to see me when no other could? To understand me when it was possible for no other mortal being, or divine entity for that matter? I suppose I will never know. The secret surely died with her. _Through the murky bitterness, a ray of reason shone through. "I must take what she has given me and not mourn her passing overlong. That would be what Babidi would want. And yet…" Despair clouded over the ray. Before he could dwell too long on the loss of the unique mortal girl who had opened his eyes to the meaning of guardianship, Kaioushin sensed another ki.

__

Could it be? the elvish deity thought incredulously. Icy, yet nurturing, the ki seemed almost familiar. Soundlessly he stole through the thick underbrush, turning the possibility over in his mind. 

Sure enough, kneeling beside Gohan in the clearing was Kibito. Healing radiance sparkled in the air around the two of them like sunfire. As Kaioushin approached, Kibito looked up. A rare smile, though a grim one, split his face into innumerable wrinkles. "I am glad of your return."

Kaioushin did not reply. As Gohan's body absorbed Kibito's healing, traces of color returned to the youth's face. By the time, he opened his eyes, the sun beat upon them from directly overhead. Kaioushin smiled with genuine hope and determination. "Son Gohan." His voice was the music of the birds gathering at sunset.

"Kaioushin!" Gohan gasped. "Kibito!" Overcome with relief and surprise, the youth could only grin dazedly. He gingerly shifted to a sitting position. As he did so, the animals surrounding him fled. The smile became wider when he realized that the pain was gone.

Knowing his intention would disturb Kibito, Kaioushin chose his next words carefully. "There is a weapon of importance that you must claim. With it, there is a better chance of bringing about Majin Buu's defeat."

Gohan got to his feet slowly. Kibito's sour grimace chilled him with uncertainty "Where is this weapon? _What_ is it for that matter?"

"It is the Zet Sword on Kaioushinkai. No mortal has yet been to this planet." Kaioushin met Kibito's eyes with a frosty glare of his own. "However, it will provide an unbelievable advantage - something which we could use - once you learn to use it," he added as much for Kibito's benefit as for Gohan's.

"Well then, let's go!" Gohan laughed, thrilled at the prospect.

"KaiKai!"

In a heartbeat, the trio materialized on the lavender planet of eternal twilight. Gohan stared about in awe. There was no mistaking the frigid majesty of the rosy planet. However, the very grass ached with sorrow, for they had drunken of the purest of all blood.

Disapproving of so much as every movement of the youth's eyes Kibito nonetheless maintained a respectful silence. Kaioushin, surveying the silent hills, of almost glass-like keenness, could not disregard the lingering presence of the Kais who had perished that day. Closing both eyes, the elven deity clenched his fists tightly. _In the name of the lives that monstrosity claimed for the void, for the sakes of those still alive to experience its agony, I must endure! I am all that is left! _As he envisioned the night runner, the task, though its importance had been enhanced beyond measure, suddenly seemed to weigh less upon his shoulders. _Many more will perish in this undertaking…but it must be done!_

Kaioushin turned to Gohan. Despite all that the Kai had himself discovered, the extent of hope he had placed in Gohan's affinity for the Zet sword rather frightened him. 

The half-Saiyan met the Kai's eyes unwaveringly. Between the wells of shining darkness resounded an echo of understanding. 

Fin


	7. Copyright Stuff

Copy Right Blurb

Please don't sue me. I have received no commercial gains for composing this work.

This is a piece of pure fandom for Dragonball Z. I acknowledge that the characters and so forth belong solely to their respective creators (not me!). 


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